the exit
by kissinginparis
Summary: maybe it's because the only prayer she'd ever uttered was 'thank you', and maybe that was enough.


Maybe it was because the only prayer she'd ever uttered was 'thank you', and maybe that was enough.

* * *

It's two summers after high school and she's just a jumbled mess of what once was. She's sitting there with all her bags packed, ready to go home at the foot of the underclassmen dorms at NYU when she realizes that maybe she should just up and leave. She has all she needs with her anyway.

When the taxi comes it isn't a question of taking her to the little rent-a-car across from JFK but is something more like dropping her off in front of the entrances to all those different gates.

There's America and Hawaiian. There's Chinese and Indian, French and Korean. Its like a Baskin Robin's of airlines and even though there's no Gold Medal Ribbon for her to slam her finger against and have it moments later wrapped in the confines of a sugar cone, its actually a lot better. For once in Massie Block's goddamn life, she can make her own decision.

She takes the first flight to Paris and hell, she feels so free up in that plane.

When she lands she deletes all the memory on her phone, ignoring the 27 missed calls from her mom. The sigh of a weight being lifted off her shoulders is good enough. She wanders the streets with her one limp suitcase and her dinged up backpack, her broken French gets her laughed at and for some reason she finds herself laughing along. The cracks in her heart rattle together, but sometimes it just feels good, so right,_ so needed_.

A week later she finds herself in a little apartment in the Latin Quarters, sharing a room with an eccentric woman who likes to experiment with food. Everything is brigher, more vivid, more colorful than ever.

She visits Boulevard St. Germain and splurges on bundles of macaroons, humming and giggling to herself because she learns to become her own best friend. She sips expensive French wines, but only gets samples. She never bothers to check if her credit card has been cancelled, and she relies only on a wad of cash stuffed in a sock which is lying under her creaky bed.

At night she watches the stars from her four by four balcony and pretends to know the words to the exotic songs her roommate plays. She'll flip through her rumpled pages of Vogue and Rolling Stone, a protective fortress forming around her bed. Sometimes she'll get up in the middle of the night and lie on the cool tile floor of the main room and turn on the old television with the broken antennas and listen to the crackling sounds it makes - anything to feel like she's not alone. There are mornings when she wakes up in cold sweat, wondering if this is really what her life has come to, others she'll wake up to the smell of crepes being flipped in the kitchen.

There's a day when she meets a man in a shabby old pub in the Quarters. He has stubble and light brown eyes, his smile is the whitest thing she's every seen. Such a contrast from her almost curly hair and her amber eyes, always lined with coal. She's cradling scotch and he's drinking some sort of rum mix. For once she initiates the conversation. His Argentinean accent grabs her attention and maybe its the lighting and the atmosphere, or maybe its because everything is fuzzy at that point but the moment he makes a comment about the weather she grabs his face with both hands and kisses him. Its light yet rough and her cold fingers are running across his stubble. When they break a part he touches his lips, eyes wide and before she knows it her eyes are filled with tears and she's quickly walking back to her apartment.

The man is nearly not blonde enough, his eyes are nothing close to chocolate and his face is nowhere near clean shaven - smooth, and soft and lovable. His smile does not make him look mischievous and his voice is not low enough to crackle when he whispers.

He is nothing like the man she's trying to forget.

She visits the Louvre as often as she can, trying to point out new things every time she's there. She'll take a walk out along the Seine in a ratty dress and shoes too expensive for her taste. She'll run her hand along the fence, her hands knocking against all the lovers' locks and she'll smile softly to herself because someone out there has what she does not. She grabs a hold of one and realizes the girl has the same name. A grin spreads across her face until she catches her reflection in the water and sees everything wrong. The smudged eyeliner, the broken smile, the tanned skin and the red, chapped lips.

She spends the night smoothing down her phone contemplating her next move. The moment she dials and she hears her mother's voice, she chokes out a sob.

A week later she is back where she belongs and the sweets, the eccentricity, the stubbled man and the adventure are but memories.

She whispers a 'thank you' to whoever is listening.

* * *

_don't ask. i got inspired by several posts i saw on tumblr. one called 'the five exit strategies'. other updates coming veryvery soon, also i didn't re-read this so i'm sorry for errors, i'll fix them later!_


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